


conscience makes cowards of us all

by RedRoci



Series: in their blood the Maker's will is written [2]
Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age II
Genre: Canon Divergent, Garrett's the main one but there are 4 lil Hawkes and they all live through the prologue, because fuck you bioware
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2020-03-13
Packaged: 2021-03-01 03:34:51
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,014
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23018638
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedRoci/pseuds/RedRoci
Summary: Varric lets the Champion of Kirkwall take a look at his manuscript. Garrett has notes.
Series: in their blood the Maker's will is written [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1647070
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

_ Thud. _

Varric looked up as a copy of his manuscript landed on the table before him.

“Hawke! I didn’t hear you come in. Finished it? What did you think?”

Garrett Hawke dropped into the chair across from Varric and put his feet on the table, an amused glint in his eye. 

“It’s certainly an interesting story. Fascinating, really,  _ I _ certainly don’t recall tearing an ogre’s head off with my bare hands. Sounds like the kind of thing I’d remember.”

“Aww, come on. It’s more believable than your version.” Hawke’s version included a witch who could turn into a dragon. Nobody was gonna buy that. The only reason Varric believed it was that he’d  _ met _ Flemeth when Hawke had taken her amulet to the Dalish. Weird lady. Hawke had his serious face on now. “I take it you have some notes?” Varric sighed. 

“A few.”

* * *

“ _ Kirkwall? _ ” Garrett and Marian say in unison.

“There’s a lot of Templars in Kirkwall, Mother.” The understatement of the age from dear Bethany, who looks as nervous as Garrett feels. 

“It’s also a long bloody way,” Marian points out sharply. 

“We can’t very well stay here,” Carver says, looking back the way they’ve come. Lothering burns in the distance. Memories, hopes, dreams, the only home Garrett has ever known, all discarded in their mad flight from the approaching horde. 

“We had better get a move on, then,” he says, before he can get too caught up in the loss. 

  
  


_ We’ve been in tighter spots than this _ , Garrett thinks as the darkspawn close in from both sides.  _ Just because I can’t think of any right now… _ That’s an ogre. He can feel it coming with the way the ground shakes, like at Ostagar when the king fell. Carver rushes it, and Garrett is right behind him. He doesn’t see Rian on the battlefield, but he never does. She’s never where you expect her, so he looks for the devastation she tends to leave in her wake instead. They’re a good team, the three of them, and Bethany’s magic keeping their energy up is all the advantage they need to dispatch the ogre. Garrett doesn’t say anything about the fleeting, terror-fueled vision of his baby brother on the ground, broken and bleeding. He worries, oh, he worries, but he keeps his worry to himself, buries it under a cheerful and irreverent demeanor because if he doesn’t he might break. He can’t break. Rian looks at him as she catches her breath, and she knows, but she doesn’t say anything either. There’s more darkspawn, always more darkspawn, and no time to breathe.

“There’s no end to them,” Beth says, an edge of despair on her voice, and then the horde erupts in flames before them. 

  
  


_ Darkspawn and Templars and Dragons, oh my _ . What an incredibly odd day. Running from darkspawn is infinitely easier with a dragon-witch helping, but the price of her help eats at him.  _ Witch of the Wilds, _ Aveline had said. A ghost story, a fairy tale parents scare their children with. Nothing’s ever simple when fairy stories come out of the wilds, offering help. Deliver this amulet to the Dalish, she’d said, nothing could be easier. Assuming they survived the trip. Aveline’s grief rolls off her in waves: she is taking the loss of her husband hard. Mother sits close by her, not talking, only  _ being there _ . This loss, this grief, it’s an old friend to Leandra now. Garrett sees it sometimes in the way she looks at him, knows she’s seeing his father in the shape of his face and the color of his eyes. 

Bethany sits just about as far from Aveline as she can manage. Aveline’s dead Templar had threatened her, in spite of being outnumbered and in spite of the approaching horde. Beth could be forgiven for not trusting her. Carver is already asleep, he’s always been good at that. Rian’s on watch; the witch said she’d keep an eye out for darkspawn, but Rian is skeptical about this whole thing and Garrett agrees with her. He catches her eye and nods, ever so slightly, and she winks back. She’ll wake him midway through the night and they’ll trade places, probably for as long as the witch continues to travel with them. 

* * *

“Okay, but you really should let me tell it my way, Hawke. Especially if we’re continuing with the fiction about you not being a mage.” This earned Varric a glare. “I’m not saying we  _ shouldn’t _ , Hawke. But trust me, nobody wants to hear about how the Witch of the Wilds meddled in the Champion’s affairs too, not with the rumors about her and the Wardens.” 

“Fine, leave the dragon-witch out of it. But maybe tone down the whole tearing-ogres-to-pieces-barehanded nonsense. It is categorically  _ not  _ more believable than teamwork, which is what actually happened.”

“Deal,” Varric said, though privately he disagreed. He was a professional, after all.  _ No less believable than dueling the Arishok.  _

* * *

Garrett’s initial opinion of Kirkwall is not particularly flattering. The fact that the first thing you see entering the city is the giant chains and the massive, weeping slave statues they’re attached to does not make for a great first impression. Then there’s the fact that the crowd of refugees from Ferelden is being held on the island outside the city where the Circle is housed: a fortress uncomfortably named the Gallows. Very friendly welcome, that. Further complicating things is that Kirkwall has apparently reached the limit of its hospitality. The guard says they will not be allowed into the city. After helping to break up the fight that results from this announcement, Garrett isn’t sure he can blame them. A few of the men dead at his feet show signs of the corruption. 

“But we have family here!” Mother protests to the guard-captain. He’s grateful for their help with the fight, but he’s heard stories like hers a hundred times just today. 

“Madam, if I let every person who makes that claim into the city, there’d be no room to walk for all the people.”

“My brother, Gamlen Amell… please, if you could just get him a letter, he’ll prove it to you.” The guard agrees, if reluctantly. He seems skeptical at her claim that her brother is a nobleman, but he’s at least familiar with the name. 

It takes three days for Gamlen to turn up. They’re all on edge and restless when he finally does. Garrett can tell the moment he sees him that, once again, this isn’t going to be as easy as they hoped. Nobles don’t dress like that. Or smell like that, either, probably. Probably, he reckons,  _ rich _ drunks smell like a better quality of alcohol and piss, at least. He tells Leandra she looks old, which is rude. Garrett’s pretty sure they’re not close enough for it to be in fun, not like how he and his siblings poke at one another. 

“Well, Leandra, here’s the thing...the estate, it’s gone. Father...had debts, and well… Look, if you came back here looking to drop back into your old life, I’m sorry to disappoint you.” 

Mother looks close to tears, but her spine stiffens and Garrett can see the headstrong woman she was once, before the Blight, before Father died, before decades spent looking over their shoulders for Templars. “Well, we still need a way into the city.”

“Yes, about that. I was able to pull some strings, grease a few palms… But there’s a lot of you, and I’m going to need some extra grease.” 

Garrett just barely hears Rian make a comment under her breath about Gamlen’s hair, and struggles to keep a straight face. “We spent all the coin we had on the boat to get here. What do we need to do?”

“I have an… acquaintance, Athenril. She’ll pay your way into the city, but you’ll have to work for it. A year, she said.”

“A year?” Mother exclaims, disbelief in her voice.

“Calm down, Mother dear, we were going to have to find work of some kind anyway,” Rian tells her. “Just what  _ is _ this work, anyway, Uncle?” 

Gamlen clears his throat and doesn’t make eye contact when he says “It’s, ah, transportation. Of goods. For merchants, you know.”

“Smuggling,” Carver says flatly. “He means smuggling.”

“Yes, well, if you don’t like it, you can find your own way in.” His tone turns petulant, and Garrett suppresses the urge to say something snappish, opting instead for a placating gesture and diplomacy.

“Now now, we didn’t say that. What’s a year, after all? I’m sure it’ll fly by.”

They take the job. Athenril is thrilled to have four new employees, and cheap ones at that. Garrett knows they’re not being paid as well as her other men, but such is the price of doing business. Carver and Marian fret about the… less than totally legal nature of the work, worried about drawing the attention of the authorities; and Beth is more withdrawn than usual, what with the ever-present Templars wearing on her nerves. But the year passes, and they are not caught, not sent to the Gallows, not shipped back to Ferelden in chains. They live, and life goes on. 


	2. Chapter 2

Varric rubbed his chin thoughtfully. “You know, I _could_ add in that job you pulled for Athenril, the one with the noodles and that nobleman from Val Chevin…” 

“Absolutely not, Marian would _kill_ you. And then me. And then you again, probably.” 

“Alright, alright. So I’ll pick things back up after I heroically stop you from having your pocket picked in Hightown…”

* * *

Working for Athenril isn’t the worst thing the Hawkes have ever done, but it comes as a relief to be clear of her. Especially after the row over getting paid what they’re actually worth, now their year is up. But now they are faced with the problem of finding work in a city that is predisposed to hate them simply for being Fereldan. Couple that with the stressful reality of sharing Gamlen’s very small house between 6 people and a mabari, and tempers have become a bit frayed. Carver and Marian had nearly come to blows this morning, which is why Garrett had dragged his brother along to track a lead on a job. Rumor has it one of the dwarves from the Merchant’s Guild is mounting an expedition to the Deep Roads. Garrett thinks their experience with darkspawn will be an asset on such a job. The dwarf, however, does not agree. Or he doesn’t like Fereldans, hard to say. 

“I’ve already got guards, I’m not looking to hire anymore help, now get lost.” Bartrand Tethras stalks off, with the two Hawke boys scowling at his back. Carver kicks a loose rock after him. 

“Bastard.”

“We’ll just have to be more convincing next time.”

“Oh, come on, Garrett, you’re not thinking of crawling back and asking him _again_ , are you?”

“Now, Carver, I don’t crawl anywhere. He needs us, he just doesn’t know it yet.” A slightly grubby teenager brushes past them, and Garrett realizes almost immediately that he’s just had his pocket picked. He spins around, knife in hand, only to see the hapless thief pinned to a brick wall by a crossbow bolt. The dwarf attached to the crossbow it came from -and what a crossbow it is- snatches Hawke’s wallet off the thief rather disdainfully. 

“You don’t have the style to work Hightown, let alone the Merchant’s Guild.” He yanks his bolt out of the kid’s shoulder. “I don’t want to see you around here again,” he tells him, waving the point of the bolt under his nose. The pickpocket flees, and Varric turns back to the Hawkes. “Sorry about my brother. If it makes you feel any better, he’s an idiot. He’s wrong, of course, we _do_ need you. But not more hired guards; what we need is a partner.”

“What are you proposing? Also, who are you?”

“Oh, where are my manners. Varric Tethras, at your service. And I’m proposing a way of getting you on to this expedition Bartrand is planning. He’s bleeding cash, and he’s on a timetable. Got to get this show on the road before the darkspawn remember they left the stove on.”

“And what would this partnership entail, exactly?” Garrett can feel Carver’s apprehension building, but the reality is that they cannot afford to turn down the possibility of a job.

“A share in the expenses, of course… but also an equal cut of the profits.”

“When you say expenses,” Carver says, eyes narrowed. 

“Oh, about fifty sovereigns should do it.”

Garrett doesn’t _quite_ physically recoil at the amount, but it’s a close thing. “No offense, Varric Tethras, but if we had that kind of coin we wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“Oh, come now. It’s not _so_ much. I have faith in you. And, if it helps, I know of a couple job opportunities to help you on your way.”

  
  


“FIFTY SOVEREIGNS?” Marian yells.

* * *

“Wait, she did?”

“Oh right, you weren’t there for that conversation. I don’t know if you noticed how Rian didn’t really… like you all that much to start with?”

“I did pick up on that, actually. I thought she just had poor taste in friends, to be honest.”

“That’s approximately what she said about me.” 

* * *

“Calm yourself, sister, it’s an _investment_.” 

Marian is livid. And armed. Garrett is fairly certain that Gamlen is listening at the door; if he wasn’t doing so before, the shout of “fifty sovereigns” would have been irresistible. He says as much to his twin, who responds by stepping into his space and _growling_ at him. “An investment, _brother_ , of money we do not have? And have no reliable way of getting? Which was sort of the whole point of this endeavor?”

Garrett takes the not inconsiderable risk of grabbing his very angry twin by the shoulders and looks her in the eye, his voice barely above a whisper. “Rian, listen. If this expedition is worth even half what Bartrand thinks it is, we’ll be out of Lowtown, out of this house, as soon as we get back. We could do odd jobs for the next ten years and not manage that. Fifty sovereigns would keep us all in food and clothes for a while, but it wouldn’t get us out of here, not on its own.”

Rian’s expression does not change, but he feels her relax slightly; which either means she is coming around, or it means she’s about to punch him. He lets go. 

“And just how does this Varric propose we scrape together that kind of money?”

“Uh. We may possibly be slightly undercutting a certain mercenary company, doing an off-book job for the city guard, and also going behind Athenril’s back on what I am assured is definitely not a lyrium smuggling gig.”

“Garrett, if this day ends with us fighting off the entirety of the Red Iron, I _will_ kill you in your sleep.”

“Fair enough.”

* * *

“Varric, _everyone_ knew Jeven was dirty. Especially Aveline.”

“Well, obviously. But the thrill of the investigation! Solving a mystery! Outsider beat cop exposes corrupt guard for crimes against the city!”  
“Aveline is already not all that thrilled about your crime serials, Varric.”

“ _Hard in Hightown_ is not based on, related to, or affiliated with Aveline Vallen in any way, shape, form or fashion. Talk to my lawyer.”

“ _Varric_.”

“Alright, alright. But hear me out. It looks better for everybody if there was an investigation. Otherwise you’ve got a dirty guard-captain who was on the force for years and years, skimming and getting people hurt and using the guardsmen to do his dirty work and who knows what else; and everyone knew and no one did anything about it until a Fereldan refugee joined up and turned things upside down.”

Hawke rubbed absently at the stubble along his jaw. “What you’re saying is nobody _wants_ to hear the truth. Not about the guard, not about Aveline, not about me or what I’ve done.”  
“Exactly. People want to hear what they want to hear, Hawke. Heroes, villains, monsters. Plots and machinations and evil-doers vanquished, cities saved; all wrapped up in a nice, neat, _simple_ package.”

“There was nothing simple about it, Varric.” Almost nothing, anyway. Taking care of Meredith was simple. Needed doing. He didn’t like it, didn’t like that Orsino had proved her point about blood mages, didn’t like that it had come down to bloody battle in the corridors and courtyards of the Gallows, even as the ashes from the Chantry fell through the air. But it had been simple.

* * *

“I distinctly remember hearing you say this was _not_ a lyrium job.”   
“What I _said_ was that I had been _told_ it wasn’t a lyrium job. In a tone that I thought implied I was well aware that it definitely was going to be a lyrium job.” Rian punches him in the arm. “Ow.” Getting in the middle of some kind of turf war over who gets to smuggle lyrium in Kirkwall is not Garrett’s idea of a lovely summer evening either, but a job is a job, and they do have a fair amount of experience in this line of work. 

“Why are they hiding it in the alienage, anyway?” Carver wants to know. He’s right, of course, Darktown seems like it would be a better place to hide; the guard don’t go there. But then, the guard don’t interfere much with crimes committed in the alienage, either. Now Aveline’s in charge of things, that might change, but for the moment, the only law that ever shows up here is the Templars, and although lyrium smuggling is definitely a Templar problem, it’s not one they’ll admit to, or one of the ones they’re interested in dealing with. 

“I hate lyrium jobs,” Rian sighs. They always involve either mages or addicts; which come in two flavors: desperate ex-Templar or angry self righteous active-duty Templar, and it’s hard to say which is worse. 

“Me too,” Varric tells her. “Stepping on the Carta’s toes is a recipe for disaster.”


End file.
